We Gotta Get Outta This Place
by Seldavia
Summary: Rewrite. Great warriors from different worlds brought together to fight. Will they fight to the end? Of course not! Why play a madman's game when you can escape? Assuming, of course, that escape is even possible! Foes become allies and other tropes both abound and are mocked in a tale of a multiple-world jailbreak!


_Awake! Sleeping time is done._

_We begin on Level One!_

Bowser awoke with a snort. "Wha-?" He was probably dreaming, but he could have sworn that someone had addressed him with a terrible rhyme. Groping for the light switch in the dark, he bumped into a little nightstand against the wall. Something clattered to the floor and he felt around until his hand lit upon a small candle. He lit it with the tiniest bit of breath, and held it over his head. "Who's there?"

Nobody answered. He squinted in the dark, the candlelight flickering against the walls of his castle bedroom. Same steel-frame windows. Same portraits of Peach, some childishly painted with his own hand. Same voodoo doll of Mario in the corner.

"Must have been that extra helping of tacos," he muttered, then turned around to go back to bed.

It was gone. Just a big, empty space in the middle of the gray stone floor stood between him and the door. Or, at least, the wall where the door should have been.

"All right, who's the wise guy?!" He demanded, his voice rising to a roar. "Who dares disturb the Koopa King's beauty sleep?!"

A giggle floated through the air. An irritating and slightly frightening giggle, like one might hear from a mosquito about to bite. Or from a floppy-shoed clown about to clonk another on the head. A giggle that suggested something with a cute fluffy exterior and a menacing shadow.

_Apologies, from my heart;_

_But now it is time to start!_

"Listen, you –" Bowser began, but whatever he was about to say was drowned out as the five walls of his tower fell apart as one, daytime light blinding him.

_And so now we begin!_

_Do you think you can win?_

Bowser forced his eyes open to see a sea of projectiles speeding for him. He ducked into his shell just in time to hear them rattle off the hard exterior. He cautiously poked his head out and demanded, "What in the name of the Star Spirits is going on here?!"

_I suggest that you should run,_

_As I'm loading up my gun!_

He waited no longer and leaped to his feet, stomping as quickly as he could away from the projectiles. Hearing them whizzing behind him again, he took shelter in his shell and felt them collide, harder this time. In a panic now, he bolted off on all fours.

A racetrack. Bowser was on a racetrack of some kind, with high walls on both sides. An audience he could not see screamed above him. He turned a sharp corner and crashed into a row of hurdles.

"Ooh, that'll cost him a hundred points!" a great booming voice announced from the great beyond, very different from the giggling mosquito.

"Seriously?" Bowser demanded of no one in particular, wrenching one of the hurdles from around his neck. He craned his head, trying to see into the stands and where the voice was coming from.

"Here come the bouncing bombs!" the disembodied voice called out, and Bowser turned in consternation to see an avalanche of perfectly round, fused bombs tumbling out of tiny trapdoors in the stands and heading straight for him. He sprinted off in the other direction, rounded another curve, and skidded to a halt as he found himself on the precipice of a very high pedestal, gazing down into a watery abyss below.

He glanced over his shoulder to see the avalanche of bombs rumbling closer. Making his choice, he leapt clumsily off the edge and fell into the water with a resounding splash.

Coming up for air, he heard the booming voice rattle his eardrums. "Can he handle the laser sharks?"

"WHAT?!" Bowser shifted in the water just in time to see a gated opening behind him open up, with several dark shapes oozing out, each one headed by a tiny red speck of light.

His scream dissolved into bubbles as he ducked down into the water and swam for his life. Walls loomed up before him in the murky water and he dodged them just in time. Something peppered his back legs with tiny bites, and he didn't turn around to see if it was teeth or lasers. He ran headlong into a grate, and his muscles jerked as a current of electricity jolted through them.

Floating sideways, with spots dancing before his eyes, he spotted a gap in the walled water and shot upward toward it. Clambering out of the water, he found himself on smooth metal, with no racetrack or audience in sight.

The voice assaulted his ears. "Can he handle the rolling boulders?"

Bowser looked up to see a torrent of stones, each as big as he was, stampeding down the hill toward him. Bellowing up to the air above, he demanded, "What makes you think I'm going to keep going through these death traps, you – AUUUGH!"

The floor, too, was electrified. As soon as he could pry himself off it, Bowser launched himself up the hill, punching the boulders out of the way. Now he was getting mad. Somebody was in in line for a butt-kicking. He tested his knuckles on the enormous stones and scrambled to the top of the hill. Fists clenched, he waited on an empty plateau for the next round of torture. "Well?! Bring it on, you freak!"

He didn't wait long. "Tag team! Luigi and Bowser, versus Mario and Peach!"

"Did he say-" Bowser's question stuffed itself back inside his mouth as a rubber ball hit him square in the jaw. "Who threw that?!" he demanded, picking it up and hurling it at the first person he saw.

"Ow!" Bowser spied Luigi picking himself up off the ground. "No, not at me! You're supposed to throw it at them!"

Bowser pointed an accusing finger and let loose a blast of rage. "You don't tell me what to do!" Another ball smacked him in the back of his head. He turned around to see Peach standing there with her hands over her mouth.

"Sorry!" she exclaimed. Then she picked up a ball and hit him again.

"Stop that!" He grabbed a ball and turned to throw it at Mario, only to get hit first, square between the eyes. Roaring, Bowser dropped the ball and came after him.

"No, don't!" he heard Peach squeal behind him. "If you don't play, you'll never get out!"

"What do you mean?" he demanded. She opened her mouth to speak, but jerked slightly as Luigi's ball made contact with her back. "Hey!"

"Bowser, please, they're just balls!" Peach shouted frantically as Bowser chased Luigi down. "Just play! Please!"

"Fine!" In a fit of temper, he sent a ball spinning after Mario that bounced off him so hard it slammed into Peach as well.

"Just play!" she insisted, picking it up and smacking him in the head with it as he stooped over to help her up.

Growling, he gathered up several into his arms and pitched them one after another into Mario, throwing one underhanded toward Peach as an afterthought. After several minutes of this, a buzzer sounded, and the balls disappeared from his hands. He turned to Peach, but just as he opened his mouth, she and the two Mario Brothers suddenly disappeared.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, is he in or out?" The booming voice still rattled in his head after he clamped his hands over his ears. A nearly equal cacophony of boos and cheers rattled the floor in reply.

"The votes are in…he's in!" Confetti burst out of the walls. Firecrackers rocketed skyward. Bowser clamped his hands harder over his ears and shut his eyes against the insanity.

He felt the floor give way beneath him.

The walls echoed with his yells as he tumbled over and over down a bendy, snakelike slide. A door opened and he popped back out into sunlight.

There he beheld the most bizarre sight yet. An enormous mansion, with great windowed walls, yet separated by steel into several components. A giant swimming pool, complete with palm trees and lounge chairs, yet surrounded on hall sides by high walls. And four different people, each one stranger than the last.

One encased entirely in some kind of armor, blue eyes peeking through a visor. One young man with blue hair and a cape about his shoulders. One tall man in black armor, staring down at him with a frown like a thundercloud. And one pink puffy marshmallow, that bounced excitedly toward him as he picked himself up off the ground.

"Would one of you be so kind as to tell me what's going on?" He grumbled as he dusted himself off.

The boy in blue addressed him. "Great Dragon, we know not how we arrived, only that we are prisoners here, some with friends and allies locked in other wings." He gestured toward the mansion. "They call it the House of Smashers."


End file.
